My favorite meta game when programming Rust is seeing how long I can go before adding the serde crate to my project

I got random encounters working in 1-Bit Fantasy, which means that a lot of the fundamental systems are in place. Now it's time to build out maps, NPC, enemies, spells, and polish it all up a bit.

Dragon pixel icon with text that says "1-Bit Fantasy - Playdate JRPG PRototype"

While I was planning to lean into making this little JRPG prototype totally absurd, I've decided to keep it simple and renamed the project to 1-Bit Fantasy. Focusing on the fundamentals without the silly ideas.

Coding is a creative process that connects to design, so when you use AI for coding, you lose the creative benefits too.

Using AI for coding absolutely makes people worse programmers. You understand the code less, you care less since you didn't sweat over it, and you become less diligent about reviewing it.

One of my big concerns about using AI for coding is that it effectively conditions developers to no longer think critically and to learn key concepts on their own. When you prompt the AI every time you're stuck, you deskill yourself and your problem solving muscle atrophies.

I was struggling with turn-based combat with multiple party members and enemies, wrote a bunch of code, deleted it, and then broke it down into small tasks and got it working. Much easier the second time around. Hooray for persisting through the challenges. Learning is fun! Challenges are good!

In the depths of combat UI with hero selection and enemy target selection in Final Dragon Fantasy

Pleased to announce that the Board of Directors has decided to rename Final Dragon Fantasy to it's full, final form: Final Dragon Fantasy: Jeff's Quest -365/1 Days- Rebirth+

You can now run from combat in Final Dragon Fantasy

two loy poly car models with a shrine background, Van saying in textbox: "Funny running into you up here at the shrine on such a rainy April evening..."

found this in my Game Dev folder: traction-control.jpg

also physical buttons you can press rule

Talking to innkeeper

enemies on screen during combat

I'm going to be working on my silly little JRPG for Playdate called, currently called Final Dragon Fantasy. My next feature to implement is combat!

nizakashii

I've been really enjoying these two free games for @play.date on itch Usagi no Koushin & Double Neko : nizakashii.itch.io

One is a challenge-based shmup with short levels. The other is a match-3 game with numbers. Really great vibes. Hope nizakashii makes more games for Playdate!

Looks great! The subtle improvements are nice

This is so exciting! And the bit about PD being used for education had me thinking that my book could be useful too for educators and what if I offered some sort of discount for teachers/students? 💭 I'll explore the idea some more when final draft is done!

That's awesome!! Looking great

Yesterday I also got the field menu implemented (doesn't do much yet other than show details) and saving and loading game state working. Having a fun time with all this menu work.

Getting myself prepared for tackling random encounters and combat next!

Continuing to make progress and having fun with FDF: got NPC talking and navigating between Overworld and the Village working, as well as talking to Innkeeper to heal party (which costs Gold).

Made good progress on day one of Final Dragon Fantasy. Maps load from Tiled with collision detection, MIDI music plays in field and combat, and there's a combat scene mock-up. Tomorrow will be combat basics, multiple maps, and field menu.

tiler_picker app with image list

viewing an image in the tile_picker app, zoomed in with tile indexes showing

I made my tile_picker open source if it's of use to anyone github.com/brettchalupa/tile_picker - fun little raylib + raygui utility that I'll add to as I need it

I added ability to load `tp.toml` where you can specify project's image directory and whether to start the index at 0 or 1

Combat screen with two squids and a reaper displayed. Attack and Run options. And text that reads "2x Squid and Reaper attack!"

Very early combat rendering working.

Tile picker showing enemy sprites and their tile number

Adapted my tile picker tool to support Lua one-based indices so I can easily display tiles using Playdate SDK's imagetable.

Using @hexanyives.bsky.social's beautiful Monster Menagerie sprites 🤩 hexany-ives.itch.io/hexanys-mons...

I want to expand upon the Dungeon Crawler chapters from my Playdate book into a bigger game as a capstone project before I prepare the final draft of the book. My intent is to release Final Dragon Fantasy for free.

Once I finish this prototype and the book, I'll return to Enigmata.

Main menu screen for Final Dragon Fantasy

I am going to try to make a polished, silly, short JRPG prototype for Playdate over the next two weeks. Development of Final Dragon Fantasy begins with a simple Main Menu screen.

IMO Playdate needs more turn-based RPGs, so I'm going to try to make one!

XIRA Echoes of The Outlands by Buster Ermy A fast-paced vertical shoot ’em up

Incredible new shmup for Pico-8 by Buster Ermy (their 3rd! so far): XIRA Echoes of the Outlands

Been really enjoying playing it and love the art

buster-ermy.itch.io/xira

How much faster is C than Lua for Playdate game development? YouTube video by Brett Makes Games

Made a video about my Lua vs C Playdate performance findings! www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKmg...

The crank's precision feels quite good compared to the buttons too, which I was pleasantly surprised by!

Love it! The style reminds me me of Tsutomu Nihei's Blame!

I have been wanting Super Hexagon on Playdate... made decent progress tonight!